The problem I have with closed (access) papers

[b_force]

Well, technically this isn't about hardware, but since this is the only forum group that's about open source I think this is the right spot.

As a R&D engineer I am often very interested what is going on around the world with new technology.
As an engineer I also strongly believe in how science works; people postulate an theory, do research to test their theories and share it so everyone else can read if their findings are actually not some kind of scam.
Other people can repeat the experiment to confirm the findings of the paper in question.

Unfortunately, what happens quiet often is that people first need to pay a pretty hefty commission to join some kind of society in the first place.
Second is that a lot of times papers are easily 5-20 bucks each!

Of course research isn't free and costs are being made.
But isn't this going right against the whole idea of science; sharing your findings with the world so the rest of the world can criticize it?

I mean asking pretty pennies for just a paper lowers the credibility pretty significant in my opinion.
Also it makes it a lot less accessible for the bigger audience (officially each individual has to buy his own copy).
Which is particularly annoying with certain myths that are still floating around today.

I do see "open access" papers popping up more often, but still a significant amount people need to pay for it.

[Mechatrommer]

Unfortunately, what happens quiet often is that people first need to pay a pretty hefty commission to join some kind of society in the first place.

ieee community doesnt seem too bad, student membership is about $10-20..

Second is that a lot of times papers are easily 5-20 bucks each!

those people got to eat what do you expect? put it to yourself, are you willing to do charity work while at the same time eating grass?

Of course research isn't free and costs are being made.

you said it yourself, so they have to compensate, by charging their years of knowledge and R&D. you should be blessed if they even sell it.

But isn't this going right against the whole idea of science; sharing your findings with the world so the rest of the world can criticize it?

they share it with the people they know, not some random people that could possibly a maniac or KGB, "criticize" is an ideal term, in reality it can be misused, a free shortcut to the next development etc etc.

I do see "open access" papers popping up more often, but still a significant amount people need to pay for it.

usually free access is to the well known knowledge, proven since some decades back. paid papers usually enhancement or specialization of that general knowledge thats been done recently by some usually small group of research team or individuals. it costed money to do the research why do you expect free meal from them? for sensitive cutting edge military grade technologies, just dream on acquiring that type of knowledge even if you have 7 digit money in your pocket.

[b_force]

Who cares about student memberships?
We are engineers, not students anymore.

Like I said, I get that people need to eat, that's not the point.
But my whole point is that it drives right against to whole thinking how science works.
I even believe that in people actually reach a smaller audience because of the costs.
In the end you're doing research to get your word out, not to get rich.
Than you're doing the wrong job.

Personally, I see research and writing papers as an ancillary.
So with the job I pay my bills, with papers I reach the audience.

[Mechatrommer]

Who cares about student memberships?
We are engineers, not students anymore.

if you cant afford professional anual fee of $77 then its too sad, you can either subscribe as student as i suggested, or find another employer who pays decently.

Personally, I see research and writing papers as an ancillary.
So with the job I pay my bills, with papers I reach the audience.

you may start to set the example. i believe you are not the first. but you cant force other to follow the course because they may have different problem from yours.

i got your point on open (free) informations for sharing criticizing whatever. you are actually proposing the idealistic of "open source" community. you may learn from that, most others still preferred paid version. mainly due to heavily degraded quality of "open source" product, ask again why? the large chunks who buy "open source" are mostly non-professional non profitable student type people.

[rhb]

IEEE commonly charges *members* $25 per paper!

I dropped my membership because it didn't really offer any benefits.  To solve the paper access problem I go to a  university about 75 miles from home and spend a few hours with a USB drive downloading papers.  Far from ideal, but at least I can afford it.

I spent my career in reflection seismology.  Fortunately, SEG does not have such insane paper charges, though SPE does.  So to get those I went though the company library until it ceased to exist.  But for a normal piece of work I would typically collect 20-40 papers.  In some cases *many* more.

Professional societies which charge members for access to the literature are only giving lip service to promoting the field they purport to serve.  Mostly they are feathering someone's nest.

A lot of academics publish first as a departmental report and then submit a paper.  That way the IEEE and Elsevier goon squads can't touch them.

[Mechatrommer]

IEEE commonly charges *members* $25 per paper!

it depends on how you value them. i think not all the fee will go to the author (some paper involves several authors), only small portion of it, maybe some to university supporting them and the rest go to ieee etc. they are talking about using the money for charity or development or awareness of some sort. i dont know maybe just a lip service, or just to get someone rich. but i've seen universities and schools too doing outdoor activities to expose or develop students more. all these require money, more money more activities. and being in education sector, government budget can be tight we'll need all the money we can get to do such activities, even we have to find donors and beg money from some people, it will be ideal if someone in the sector is willing to pull his pocket money out for that, are you? i havent seen a rich man working in education sector except from his own salary and in really high position. the one with the side income will not get that rich either.

To solve the paper access problem I go to a  university about 75 miles from home and spend a few hours with a USB drive downloading papers.  Far from ideal, but at least I can afford it.

the nearest to me is 500km. and i remember in other university, we need to apply for member card in order to go into the library where all the papers are in.

I spent my career in reflection seismology.  Fortunately, SEG does not have such insane paper charges, though SPE does.  So to get those I went though the company library until it ceased to exist.  But for a normal piece of work I would typically collect 20-40 papers.  In some cases *many* more.

that equal to someone doing a research or master thesis. if you are doing it every day i dont know how many thesis (master) you already have.

[kony]

Noone here heard of Scihub yet?

[Doctorandus_P]

And the sadest part is that the people who write the papers often almost get nothing, or a very small part of the money you pay for those papers.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

The saddest part is that those papers in many cases come from public money funded research projects, from public universities. And even saddest yet when said papers end up as patents owned by the same teachers/students/teams whom we paid to in the first place to do the research for us.

Most public universities are public money suckers, corrupt, corporativist and endogamic, a very well paid dirty bussiness, nowadays. Fortunately internet might end with that. It's quite well pictured in "The Big Bang Theory", BTW.

[ferdieCX]

I am already IEEE member and I also pay extra for having access to the Proceedings of the IEEE.
Sadly, the IEEE has too many different journals and magazines, and very oft what I need was published in some obscure one.

[rhb]

Anyone who only read 30-40 papers for an MS did a really crappy job and had a very poor supervisor.  Bear in mind that a large fraction of the papers don't have any significant content.  For my MS, a major point was a single sentence in an obscure paper that I should never have found without the help of a librarian who was a computer search expert in the late 70's.

I frequently was asked to implement software for something someone heard about.   Or fix what someone else had done.  There are often many ways of doing such things.  In the case of processing directional surveys of wells there are about a dozen.  Only one is any good, but often people want to run old pencil and graph paper methods to compare to old data.  The folder I have for that is about 3" thick.  I had to write software for processing directional surveys at least 4 times at different companies.  It was a huge headache collecting all those papers.  The one good method has two different names.

Lots of my work involved the continuum mechanics of porous media.  The gist of that is how much does the pore fluid affect the stiffness of the rock.  That in turn leads to the question of what is the compressibility of an oil of a specific composition at a certain temperature and pressure.  The papers from that work fill a file drawer and the books fill about 6 ft of shelves.  And I didn't get all that heavily involved with it relative to some people I know.

I'm a research scientist, not an engineer.  Very different world.  I recently got interested in compressive sensing and more generally sparse L1 pursuits.   That exercise involved reading an 800 page book once and a 600 page book twice, after which I started reading the original papers.  Those now occupy 4 folders totaling about 5" printed double sided. If you  want to learn something about which you are ignorant, that's often the price of admission.

The reason I pull so many papers is because I have so often found that the references in a paper were incorrect.  I start with a few recent papers, then I get the major papers they cite and then the major papers they cite.  My mother taught me to read before age 5, so by 3rd grade I could read at high school level.  An English lit BA got me to the point I could read 600-800 words per minute.  Eye problems have slowed me down a bit, but I can still rip along at 300 or so.   Naturally, mathematics is hours per page and sometimes days.

[b_force]

The saddest part is that those papers in many cases come from public money funded research projects, from public universities. And even saddest yet when said papers end up as patents owned by the same teachers/students/teams whom we paid to in the first place to do the research for us.

Most public universities are public money suckers, corrupt, corporativist and endogamic, a very well paid dirty bussiness, nowadays. Fortunately internet might end with that. It's quite well pictured in "The Big Bang Theory", BTW.

This is especially true in the medical world.
A friend of mine is medical researcher and she told me that some professors poop out more than 10 papers a month.
Not these 5-10 page leaflets but at least 20 pages minimum.
You can't even read that in one month, let alone 10 of these things.

For the record, i am a absolutely not new to these.
Been going on for many years, but just by coincidence I just ran into another annoying issue again.
Sometimes really gets me.

And than be wonder why there is so much ignorance in the world.

[xaxaxa]

those people got to eat what do you expect? put it to yourself, are you willing to do charity work while at the same time eating grass?

All of that money goes to the journal, none to the original author.

I have never in my life paid a cent to journals (except maybe indirectly through my tuition) and never will.

I use sci-hub to view papers ever since my university credentials expired and always download a copy; I urge anyone reading this to do the same, and if sci-hub goes down we can all post our papers cache so that they can be found by the public.

[Mechatrommer]

I use sci-hub to view papers

i quickly checked sci-hub last night it doesnt have the paper that i bought last time, and its suggested sci-napse? search engine lead me to the paid ieee version which i bought last time. but yes, before anything, i will google for free copy, for advanced specialized study (or if i think i need more) that i cannot get freely, i have to pay, and personally i feel blessed they even sell it. i got my reference at $15 per paper which i think is not much. i only bought 2 or 3 paper though from ieee, so no serious penalty on money consumption. i think they will be a good supplement to free copy of "general theory" that i already had, they are math intensive though more than i can comprehend, so catching up is something to do beforehand. i only can get an idea on how they do the optimization, generally speaking. otoh, last time i found a website charging for repair and manual pdf stuffs, they charge like $5 for 40 copies, i think if they charge 10X of that i still be willing to pay, because some of the materials are non existence in free domain. but i cant find the website anymore its sad.

All of that money goes to the journal, none to the original author.

i suspect if that is the case, no author will be wiling to publish to them, and if what they claimed about public awareness sponsorship is just lip service. there will be private website everywhere selling their own paper. or better just publish it for free in sci-hub or something, no lose no gain.

[b_force]

Mmm, that method seems to work with the IEEE, unfortunately not with AES.org

[Kleinstein]

....
A friend of mine is medical researcher and she told me that some professors poop out more than 10 papers a month.
Not these 5-10 page leaflets but at least 20 pages minimum.
You can't even read that in one month, let alone 10 of these things.

For the record, i am a absolutely not new to these.
Been going on for many years, but just by coincidence I just ran into another annoying issue again.
Sometimes really gets me.

And than be wonder why there is so much ignorance in the world.

Putting out so many papers is kind of required in the US to get on with the carrier. The result is that those 10 papers are essentially the same - maybe 10 % changed with essentially no new contend. It is a stupid system made to be fooled.

[rhb]

All of that money goes to the journal, none to the original author.

i suspect if that is the case, no author will be wiling to publish to them, and if what they claimed about public awareness sponsorship is just lip service. there will be private website everywhere selling their own paper. or better just publish it for free in sci-hub or something, no lose no gain.

You clearly don't know *anything* about the subject.  The "publish or perish"  imperative is such that many journals require the author to pay a "per page charge" which is often several hundred dollars for text and substantially more for color figures.  So it's not that they don't get paid for publishing.  They have to pay to get published.

Where you get published is important to getting tenure.  Hence the racketeering by the journal publishers.

The whole thing has become a scandalous mess, but is unlikely to improve soon.

Science ran an editorial recently in which they noted that only about 5% of PhDs are able to secure an academic post.  The rest are condemned to wander from school to school and grant to grant with no sense of security.  All of this is a deliberate policy encouraged by governments, of which the US is probably the worst offender.  The hope is that out of a thousand monkey, one might prove to be an Einstein.

[Mechatrommer]

You clearly don't know *anything* about the subject...
Science ran an editorial recently in which they noted that only about 5% of PhDs are able to secure an academic post.  The rest are condemned to wander from school to school and grant to grant with no sense of security.

i dont know what you are talking about. the paid (and free) papers i got have no colors and written by several people with years of working experience jumping from aerospace, some engineering dept and then secured position in universities for years. if you have some job saturation problem, then it deserves another topic in general section.

[rhb]

Read this:

http://cofactorscience.com/blog/author-charges

It is just about traditional page charges.   Open access fees are a new twist.  The pressure for open access has in large part been generated by the very aggressive stance that Elsevier, IEEE and others have taken towards copyright infringement.

At one point I was spending $1500/yr on journal subscriptions because my client company had closed their library without making any provision for literature access.  But for the most part that only got me access to current literature.  On a trip to Stanford for a consortium meeting I spent many hours in the library at a copying machine copying papers I could affordably obtain in no other way.

I *thought* this thread was about the cost of literature access.    I was merely pointing out *why* the journal publishers have been able to get away with it.  You made the claim that authors were getting paid by the journals.  I merely tried to make clear that not only do they not get paid, they have to pay.  And they will get a cease and desist letter from the publisher's lawyers if the put a copy of their own work up on a personal web page unless they pay the "article publication charge".

The 30-40 papers number I quoted was for a typical 4-6 week programming project.  That's certainly not an MS thesis.

[JohnG]

Lots of facts and fancy mixed up here.

Yes, it sucks that individual IEEE papers cost so much. However, at least they make some attempt at peer review (and at least some of us do a pretty thorough job). And, for those who have not done it, there is a hell of a lot of work that goes into publishing this stuff for what amounts to a really limited audience.

And, they allow authors to make their work available. There are restrictions, but they are not onerous. See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/rights-policies.html. No, it's not perfect, but essentially authors and their employers can make the papers available if they so choose. It's much better that Elsevier or the like.

That being said, it's probably a dying model.

As for academia, the crazy patent stuff started in the US when states cut funding for state schools, at least. In return, the schools got ability to monetize IP, and in some states, raise tuition.

In the name of KNOWLEDGE, I am providing my opinions for FREE 

John

[b_force]

I *thought* this thread was about the cost of literature access.

If anything, I started the thread to discuss about the fact that it happens.
In my opinion it's morally wrong and basically right against what science stands for.
Don't care if it costs money or not.
Running a police force also costs money.

I just gave one example about how getting to pay your bills with other methods, there are many more.
Science of any kind has to be transparent and objective.
Making it only accessible for bearded men with big wallets is pretty far from that.

[IanB]

All of that money goes to the journal, none to the original author.

i suspect if that is the case, no author will be wiling to publish to them, and if what they claimed about public awareness sponsorship is just lip service. there will be private website everywhere selling their own paper. or better just publish it for free in sci-hub or something, no lose no gain.

You don't need to suspect. It really is the case. Scientific journals do not pay the authors for the papers they publish, nor do they pay the reviewers for their work when reviewing the papers prior to publication. The reason this situation persists is that papers are only recognized when they appear in journals with prestigious titles. You can write a paper and publish it yourself, but it will carry no weight and will not be valued.

[rhb]

From the link.

" Authors shall not post the final, published versions of their articles."

Unfortunately, not all authors publish a preprint. 

The case where it gets really painful is work from 20+ years ago.  IEEE has that very thoroughly pay walled at very stiff rates.  I wanted to read a bunch of papers on network analyzers (e.g. 6 port).  I'm limited to no more than 2 hours of access per visit at the university, but at least I can get the papers.   I certainly cannot afford $675 in  charges for the 27 papers I got for a hobby interest.

As a friend of mine likes to say I'm a 3 sigma outlier.  I have a 5000+ volume personal technical library and I actually check the citations of the citations for anything which has even a remote possibility of being important.  There is a particular citation in the geophysical literature which is almost invariably wrong.  Correct author, wrong paper.

I don't mind paying for papers.  At  $1-5 I would not bat an eyelash.  Five thousand technical books don't come cheap.  I have a *lot* of books which cost over $100.   But I was able to charge a very good rate as a contractor because if a question arose, I would often show up at work the next day with the definitive answer.

[Mechatrommer]

Well if that is the case, if i'm the author, the journal can go fuck themselves. I'll setup my own website and publish my own work there, whether paid, donation or free based. Whatever model i want, no obligation to journal whatsoever, or simply put in the sci-hub or any file cloud based whatever hosting with good search hit, if want more audience. And let the journal die slowly. Well but, if the paper only avail in journal then its inevitable from readers standpoint.

Why it will have no weight if i put on personal website? Any interested reader will eventually found it, this is internet age. If all authors put in personal website and enforce copyright, community will start to realize journal is not the place anymore and will die quicker than you know.

[rhb]

You're not trying to get tenured as a professor.